Efficient Enumeration of Unidirectional Cuts for Technology Mapping of Boolean Networks

Abstract

In technology mapping, enumeration of subcircuits or cuts to be replaced by a standard cell is an important step that decides both the quality of the solution and execution speed. In this work, we view cuts as set of edges instead of as set of nodes and based on it, provide a classification of cuts. It is shown that if enumeration is restricted to a subclass of cuts called unidirectional cuts, the quality of solution does not degrade. We also show that such cuts are equivalent to a known class of cuts called strong line cuts first proposed in [14]. We propose an efficient enumeration method based on a novel graph pruning algorithm that utilizes network flow to approximate minimum strong line cut. The runtimes for the proposed enumeration method are shown to be quite practical for enumeration of a large number of cuts.